POLITICS

China is so obsessed with making the United States apologize for the recent collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. Navy plane, one would think it was the Miss Manners of international diplomacy. But the situation involving 24 American servicemen held on...

The election of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February prompted much hysteria in the Arab world -- and hand-wringing in Washington -- over Sharon's "commitment" to the "peace process." Ever wonder why the same standards don't seem to apply to Palestinian...

Buried in President Bush's liberal-spending, $44.5 billion education budget is a little-noticed proposal to increase funds for special education. The budget item intends to help states and school districts comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act...

It looks as though we've won. Officials inside and outside the Bush administration are hailing China's positive response to our carefully crafted letter of regret as validation of the President's "quiet diplomacy." The truth, however, is quite different.The moral...

deep-pocketed special interest group remains curiously silent amid the furor over campaign finance "reform": Indian tribes. Why? You might think tribal leaders would be swarming Capitol Hill, joining other business groups and trade associations that are rightly...

In the past few months, I've noticed a disturbing shift in attitude towards currency devaluation. An increasing number of economists and journalists are making comments approving currency devaluation as a way to boost economies and "gain competitiveness." Some...

On March 20th, environmentalist activists besieged Starbucks cafes all over the country. Their goal? To impose on the company, and on us, coffee lovers, their own idea of which ingredients should go into our lattes and cappuccinos. This latest campaign, organized by...

For the past week, commentators have decried the return of "dangerous Cold War thinking." But the crisis with China is just the opposite. It is not a return to the past, but rather the outcome of America's eager courtship, over the last decade, of China's communist...

The budget surpluses over the next 10 years are expected to reach $5.6 trillion, yet Washington insiders are screaming that President Bush's modest $1.6 trillion tax cut is too big. But if anything, it's too small. The Bush tax cut is only about half the size of the...

Once a week, 9- and 10-year-old boys at Cleveland Elementary School in Washington, D.C., learn how to be gentlemen. They're taught to take off their hats when they enter a building. They're told to open doors for visitors. They learn how to respect each other, respect...

David Bell, Harvard law professor, counseled, "Black people will never gain full equality in this country." The late columnist Carl Rowan said, "Racism remains a terrible curse on this society, and ... nothing in sight suggests that that curse will end soon." New York...

What is it with some Republican leaders and baseball? When it comes to America's national pastime, the party of lower taxes and less government leaves its principles in the dust. The lead GOP pitcher for sports pork is President Bush, who launched a federally...

Statisticians who watch the stock market are accustomed to using the phrase "mean reversion" to describe how returns from investing in equities tend to come back to their long-term averages after they diverge for awhile. The extraordinary period that ended about a...

I could tell it was a parody. "Dear Warden Lappin," began the letter to the director of the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., where Timothy McVeigh is being held, "On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), I am writing to ask that you...

One of Hong Kong's largest, and most enduring business institutions has been laid low by a reckless brat from one of Hong Kong's most powerful families. About a year ago, Richard Li acquired Hong Kong Telecom, and proceeded to destroy over US$20 billion of Hong Kong...

Cicero wrote that, "There is nothing more fatal to friendship than the greed of gain." Although a popular sentiment, it's a deeply mistaken one. Think about the friends you have. Try to make yourself aware of what you enjoy about those friends -- that is, how they...

Over the past two weeks, college students have been denouncing the publication of an ad that opposes "reparations" to blacks in America. Angry Duke students staged a sit-in to demand an apology by the school's newspaper, the Chronicle, for running the ad, "Ten Reasons...

It is time to put the John McCain myth to rest. For years, the national media and a gullible grass-roots following have glorified McCain as a man of integrity who deals in "straight talk." They have promoted his image as a hero who fought bravely for his country in...

America faces a serious threat. It comes from a war being fought within our own borders. The war is on merit, and it may ultimately decide the fate of our society. One place this war is being fought, and lost, is in the U.S. Army. The losers are the Army Rangers, the...

Congress and the Bush administration are looking for ways to reverse President Clinton's barrage of executive orders from his final months of office. The former president, for example, arbitrarily designated millions of acres of private lands as public property,...